Also, a good internship will look much better on a college app than a few extra points.
Sadly, nope, unless you're applying to a high-end private school. I know the UC system doesn't care at all about your work experience, and even if you founded a company when you were in HS, that would at best be worth 150-300 SAT points.
Now that I think about it, it's scary that I still remember this.
Completely disagree. I too went through the college admissions process.
Yes, public schools care more about standardized numbers (SAT/GPA), but you don't need a very high SAT score (in strictly relative terms to private schools) to get into a top public school, even the top UCs.
Put it this way: An elite public school might weight SATs 40%, but the median SAT will only be 2000 anyway.
Whereas an elite private might have a median of 2150 with a weighting of 20%.
The fact is that public schools will give more weight to SATs, but the threshold for what above average for admission is already lower.
As someone who's had a reasonable amount of success with the SAT (a 2360 in the October 2009 SAT) and now spends a bit of time tutoring students for the SAT, I'd argue that for you a whole summer is overkill for the SAT.
If you're a fast learner with a knack for pattern recognition, which your internship experience suggests to me that you are, mastering the SAT for you should be as simple as taking the 10 tests in the Official SAT book and going over answers and explanations with someone. That's easily achieved over a few weeks of focused work.
It seems crazy when you consider how much people freak out over it, but I'm confident this works and I encourage you to try it out.
If you have any specific questions about the SAT or the college applications process in general (something I also had a reasonable amount of success with in that I got into all 4 of the Ivies I applied to) feel free to email me.
I'm looking to go to Stanford upon graduating high school (like you also expressed an interest to do), and from what I have heard, they definitely value SAT scores very high, but if there isn't anything besides that (like your development/internship experience), they honestly don't care much about your scores. And also, I'm pretty sure the SAT takes place senior year, unless of course you are going to be using your genius capacities to do it earlier :)
Most people will take their SAT at the beginning of their Junior year. This way they have ample time to retake if they're not happy with their scores.
Stanford, MIT, and the Ivies see the SAT as more of a threshold score. I.E. there's not much difference between a 2300 and a 2400. As long as you have above a certain range, you should be fine. The SAT doesn't make or break people.
Doesn't matter. Having a good to decent SAT score enables one to get into a better college/university. As long as you don't spend more than 1 summer prepping for it, it's worth the time investment.
Also, a good internship will look much better on a college app than a few extra points.